Organization calls for improvements to Sudbury, Assabet and Concord waters

By Cesareo Contreras Daily News Staff

Saturday

Jul 6, 2019 at 6:00 AM

Both the upper and lower parts of the Sudbury River received an F for fish edibility. Traces of mercury are found on both sides of the river, largely because mercury falls downstream of the Nyanza SuperFund Site in Ashland, the organization said.

The report is published and the grades are in.

After two years of meeting with members of the community and collecting data, a nonprofit whose mission it is to protect and improve the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord rivers released its first report card detailing the health of each individual river and the river system as a whole.

With an overall B average for the three rivers, the rivers fared pretty well, said Alison Field-Juma, executive director of Concord-based OARS Inc.. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement.

Grades for the upper and lower parts of the Sudbury river were C and B, respectively. The upper part of the Assabet River received a C-plus and the the lower part earned a B.

While there are several areas in which the two rivers fared well, including summer stream flow and groundwater levels, there are others where they missed the mark, resulting in them failing to adhere to the Federal Clean Water Act, according to the organization.

Both the upper and lower parts of the Sudbury River received an F for fish edibility, for example. Traces of mercury are found on both sides of the river, largely because mercury falls downstream of the Nyanza SuperFund Site in Ashland, the organization said. The way to correct the issue is to wait for the mercury probem to resolve itself, Field-Juma said.

After the Daily News presented Ashland Town Manager Michael Herbert with information from the report, he said the level of mercury contamination is going down, citing the Environmental Protection Agency's latest five-year report of the Superfund site.

He did note, however, that the report card is "another reminder that the legacy is still there and we have some work to do. The EPA and DPA still have some work to do."

OARS puts out yearly reports about water monitoring, but this marks the first time it has developed a report card directly focused on providing information that is easy for the public to understand..

Over the last two years, the organization has worked with the University of Maryland, which has developed report cards for other bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi River, to develop a report card for the area.

“We put out a report every year and put it on our website that we send to the communities in our watershed, and it’s great for technical people but it’s not very good with communicating with the public,” Field-Juma said. “The public wants to know, ‘Are the rivers getting better? Can I eat the fish? Can I swim?’ … We felt we needed to find a better way to communicate the science.”

To gauge the public's thinking, the organization hosted several workshops with people who use the three rivers. From their feedback, the organization developed five specific criteria: habitat, scenery, stream flow, water quality , recreation and then dozens of sub-criteria within them.

The project cost $72,000. Funding came from several sources, including $25,000 from Massachusetts Environmental Trust and $5,000 from The Sudbury Foundation. Other contributors include OARS members, OARS Board-restricted fund, National Park Service, the Cedar Tree Foundation and individual donations, Field-Juma said.

OARS was established in 1986 by a group of concerned residents as the Organization for the Assabet River. It added the Sudbury and Concord rivers to its mission in 2011.

The organization plans to release a report card every two years.

To check out the report, visit: https://ecoreportcard.org/report-cards/sudbury-assabet-concord-rivers/

Cesareo Contreras writes about environmental issues and technology for the Daily News. He can be reached at 508-626-3957or ccontreras@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @cesareo_r.